Friday, December 26, 2014

This is the
time of year where I traditionally take a few moments to write to all of you,
to express my sincere thanks for your support during the almost three years
that we’ve been involved in this adventure in Classical Music and Blogging.

Every week
it seems, somebody provides feedback on one of our posts, or comments on a
Video we added to our YouTube Channel, or reviewed one of our Internet Archive
submissions. In past years, I took the time to look at statistics, but I find
that to be, for one, a lot of trouble and, two, misleading.

Our Social
Media footprint is always increasing and we have anywhere between 150 and 200
people reading our stuff on a weekly basis – and that’s just the “new” posts.
People find our stuff and “binge” on a bunch of posts! I still get views of
stuff I posted two or three years ago, either on the blogs or on the Archive.

New
subscribers to the Blog, the Facebook feed or the YouTube channel pop up every
week! It’s hard work trying to put the word out on this little initiative, but
it looks like we have quite the modest fellowship!

It will
sound odd to bring it up this way, but I wonder how much longer I can keep
this up.

At the time
of writing this post, we have banked about 180 podcasts, and about 50 other
playlists of MP3 files of music and opera. That’s a lot for one guy! When I
look in my little notebooks and crib motes I write with ideas for more podcasts
and playlists, there’s certainly at least one more year of it in me. After that,
I’m not sure.

It’s not
that I don’t enjoy it – I do. But it’s the time investment that
is becoming the problem. Not only because I chose to maintain several platforms
(here, the Tuesday blog, OTF, the French stuff…) , but because I hold firm to
the principle that if I’m going to do this, I’m going todo it right,
and do my research and write stuff that isn’t bland or curt.

So far,
I’ve been able to do a lot of things in my spare time, over lunch at work, or
during business trips, when I have “alone time”. As time goes on, using the
computer at work becomes a problem, as our administrators block off non-work
related websites in an effort to protect our corporate network.

Everything
in balance, they say… The need to balance “personal” time and “together” time
is something I am more and more aware of. As I said a few months back, my wife
and I have become empty nesters, and she needs more of my attention, since she
is still dealing with not having the kids around, and looking for outlets for
all that extra bandwidth. Some of those outlets are things she – we – want to
do “together”. How can I say “well, I have to work on my blogs, and then we can
go to the movies”…

I have a
goal, and it is to get to the “five year mark”. I’d like to keep this up at
least until April 2016. Five years, that would be a great run, wouldn’t it? Then,
maybe I could put my blogging pants in the closet, at least until I retire and
look for things to do to fill up my days. I still have “miles to go” before
retirement, though…

So, don’t
worry, I’m not planning to stop these adventures, at least not yet. But nothing
lasts forever…

This year,
I did something different, and slowed down during July and August. I may well
do that again next year. We focused on Beethoven during the summer of 2014,
maybe we’ll do Mozart during the Summer of 2015.

Another
thing I did less of this year is podcasting “fragmentary works”. In fact, we
dedicated an entire month of podcasts to “unfinished business” and completed
some work fragments we’d posted over the last couple of years. We also did “one
work montages” for a whole month, and even added a few in the Fall (with
Mahler’s 9th and Britten’s War Requiem). I could do something like
that again next year, I haven’t quite decided yet.

Do you like
the blog’s new look – which we unveiled in the Fall? I did that, in part, to
make the site experience a better one for “mobile” users. Does it work for you?
How about my new Tuesday Blog feature “Vinyl’s Revenge”? Is that something that
you like?

As always,
I’m keen to hear from you either directly, through comments on our platforms
oir event through our Facebook and Google + handles.

So what
about 2015? What’s in store? Here are some themes (and arcs) that I have
planned for next year:

A Mendelssohn series (that’s coming in January);

A series on great pianists;

A look at Max Bruch’s concertos (in fact, there is some cross-connections with the Mendelssohn series that will make this quite compelling)

I’d like to take a serious bite out of the Mozart Piano Concertos – maybe as part of that Summer series)

I see lots of works for two soloists or two performers in our future

I’ve been thinking about “concertos” in a traditional and less-traditional sense

I think
that’s enough teasing our upcoming programs…

Usually,
this post is where I provide my “mixed bag” of YouTube fillers for the year. As
I said earlier, there wasn’t much filler material because we didn’t program
fragmentary works. So, to grow the mixed bag, I’ve thrown in some works that
will remind us of some of the themes we considered in 2015: some Themes and
Variations, maybe some “F”’s and “9”’s, Some Vinyl selections from my
collection…

Also, at
the end of this post, links to some updated directories to podcasts, playlists
and featured works.

Monday, December 22, 2014

As evidenced by other discussion threads on OperaLively, this is the time of year for staging Handel’s enduring oratorio, Messiah. (The other time of year, of course, being Easter).

The Messiah discography and the traditions surrounding its performance are extensive, and require a few comments.

The oratorio contains 53 individual sections, and it is customary – in live performance anyway – to omit about a dozen of them. Some “purists” may feel slighted by that long-standing tradition, but I consider that many sections can be skipped without really affecting the overall opus as they are sometimes quite introspective in nature and a shorter “live performance” isn’t worse for wear, if you ask me…

Speaking of purists, I’ve heard Messiah performed under “authentic” conditions, some of them adopting original orchestration - classical-era musicians added woodwinds – and more British/Victorian era conditions where there’s “strength in numbers”. As with a lot of music, there’s nothing sacrilegious about doing things one way or the other, as Messiah is about the tone, the text and the interpretation.

I read recently in a review that, like we do for Bruckner symphonies, it is important to identify the “edition”: the 1998 Clifford Bartlett edition seems to be the recent “darling” edition, supplanting the Watkins Shaw edition that many ensembles used in the 80’s and 90’s. Both editions keep to the Handel model of three “parts”, Part Two ending with the famous “Halleluiah Chorus”.

Today, however, I wanted to share a different interpretation, that precedes the HIP movement by a couple of decades, and takes liberties in the arrangement of the sections that few musicians would dare to attempt nowadays.

It should first be stated that in one way or another every performance of Messiah is a version of the work - whether because of cuts (almost always model), or drastic variation in the size of orchestra and/or chorus, or differences in instrumentation (there is much scholarly debate on the subject of Handel's original orchestral intentions), or in the use of Mozart's additional wind parts (some of which have been proved to be by Hiller, not Mozart, or for many other reasons too technical to discuss here.

This quote is taken straight from the original liner notes accompanying today’s performance on vinyl by the conductor, Leonard Bernstein.

Indeed, there is such a thing as a “Bernstein Edition” of Messiah, and it finds its inception in a live performance by Bernstein and the New-York Philharmonic that pre-dates his tenure there as music director – Carnegie Hall, 1956.

Bernstein in those early years, and throughout his life, was a maverick of sorts, looking for new ways to approach just about everything he performed. Here are the two main things you should know:

He used the “Victorian” edition by Ebenezer Prout (with a real continuo instead of the wind quartet suggested in this edition). In some movements the Mozart/Hiller instrumentation (additional winds) is used.

Bernstein saw the second part of the work as falling into two sections: switching them put the "joyful" music of the latter half of Part II immediately after Part I (the "Christmas" section), reshaping the whole work into two large parts rather than three.

The result? Well, it sure isn’t for the purists… The quest for authenticity has overtaken interpretation in many ways, and a conductor recording 'Messiah' without attempting a historically-informed style of performance does so at its own peril! And nobody would dare introduce the level of revision that Bernstein did for this 1956 recording and the Carnegie Hall performances which preceded it.

Sometimes, you have to take the moment in, and admire the “sporting element” (as Bernstein and his friend and mentor Dimitri Mitrpoulos would say). Bernstein's rearrangement of the sections works as the dramatic sequence he intended, and his reasons for doing it make sense. He made no claims to authenticity and didn't apologize for mucking about with a "masterpiece."

This is a powerful, vibrant 'Messiah' with elegant solo singing and a chorus which could sing softly when necessary and let the great choruses rip through. Although not for purists, it is both a fascinating document of Bernstein's concept of the piece and a performance well worth listening.

Friday, December 19, 2014

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The last of our montages for 2014 (already!) also completes our trifecta dedicated to the music of Hungary. Our yearly programming has always had summer montages that fall under the broad category of “musical passports”, collages of music inspired by or featuring artists from different parts of the world. Because we decided to take a break this summer, we didn’t have any such montages thus far. Today, we oblige with a tip of the hat to artists, music and the gypsy flair associated with the “other half” if the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Hungarian folk music includes a broad array of styles, including the recruitment dance verbunkos (central to Liszt’s Hungarian rhapsodies), the csárdás and nóta.

Three names pop up of our playlist this week, all three are not only Hungarians but they are also significant comntributors to the musical scene of the 20th Century: Zoltán Kodály, Béla Bartók and George Szell.

During the 20th century, Hungarian composers were influenced by the traditional music of their nation which may be considered as a repeat of the "nationalist" movements of the 19th century (notably in German and Russian traditions) but is probably more an opportunity to break from the form and rigour of the classical tradition. Béla Bartók took this departure into the abstract musical world in his appropriation of traditional Hungarian folk music as the basis for symphonic creations.

Kodály (like Bartók) was an ethnomusicologist, interested in preserving the Hungarian folk music tradition and one of his most enduring works, the folk opera Háry János, is a spoken play with songs, in the manner of the German Singspiel. Kodály wrote in his preface to the score: "Háry is a peasant, a veteran soldier who day after day sits at the tavern spinning yarns about his heroic exploits... the stories released by his imagination are an inextricable mixture of realism and naivety, of comic humour and pathos." People may assume that the title Háry János refers to a man named Harry. In Hungarian, names are always presented in the order 'surname', 'first name' (as in Bartók Béla and Liszt Ferenc). Therefore, the title refers to a man called János (a common first name in Hungary, equivalent to the English John), whose surname is Háry…

Kodály extracted the orchestral Háry János Suite from the music of the opera. The suite notably includes the cimbalom, a traditional Hungarian variant of the hammer dulcimer. The legendary George Szell conducts the suite in today’s montage, a memorable oft-reissued vintage recording.

Bartók contributes one of his many pieces inspired by Hungarian folk music, improvisations on Peasont Songs “op. 20”. This composition is the last one on which Bartók put an Opus number, because henceforth he would treat his folk music and his more artistic side as equal. However, interestingly, this work is far from his folk pieces, with its abrasive harmonies and rhythms. The great Murray Perahia is at the keyboard.

Sprinkled about in the first portion of the montage are “inspired” pieces from non-Hungarian composers: Tchaikovsky and Hector Berlioz. The "Rákóczi March" (Hungarian: Rákóczi-induló) was the unofficial state anthem of Hungary until 1823. Berlioz included the music in his composition "La Damnation de Faust" in 1846, and Franz Liszt wrote a number of arrangements, including his Hungarian Rhapsody No. 15, based on the theme.

The works by Rachmaninov, Popper and Sarasate that constitute the latter section of the montage make the transition from a more folk/peasant Hungarian atmosphere to the Romani or “Gypsy” tradition, which was also exploited by Johannes Brahms in his Hungarian Dances.

Azt hiszem, szeretni fogja ezt a zenét is!(I think you will love this music too!)

Today’s
podcast is the second in our two-part look at Liszt’s 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies.
After considering the sub-set of six that were set for orchestra, we now turn
to the remaining 13, in their original piano solo setting.

Franz
Liszt's 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies use gypsy tunes from his native Hungary, and
combine them with his own dazzling piano writing. The colorful and flamboyant
pieces which result tax pianists as much as delight listeners!

Interestingly,
however, Liszr was born on the Hungarian side of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
yet spent most of his formative years in Vienna and later in Paris. Liszt's
father played the piano, violin, cello and guitar and had been in the service
of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy. In that musical environment, he met Haydn,
Hummel and Beethoven whom he knew personally. At age six, Franz began listening
attentively to his father's piano playing and showed an interest in both sacred
and Romani (Gypsy) music – so the seed was sewn for these rhapsodies quite
early.

As Liszt
toured Europe as a piano virtuoso, notably in the late 1830’s, he returned to
his native Hungary where he re-encountered those folk tunes of his youth, and
from there the Rhapsodies are finally hatched.

All the
works bear dedications to important Hungarians of the day (Szerdahelyi, Teleki,
Festetics, Kázmér Esterházy, Mme Reviczky, Apponyi, Orczy, Augusz, Egressy), or
to musicians with Hungarian interests (Joachim, Ernst, von Bülow). The later
works express an even stronger affinity with Hungary: Rhapsodies XVI–XVIII are
entirely original compositions in the Hungarian manner, whilst XIX returns to
the methods employed in the earlier works, this time citing the origin of the
themes. The last four Rhapsodies were all published in Hungary, generally with
Hungarian and German titles, and with Liszt’s name in his now-preferred
Hungarian style: Liszt Ferenc. Rapsodie hongroise I was begun no earlier than
1847, and uses material from the Consolations. The piece is in the familiar
csárdás pattern of lassú and friss: fast and slow sections, each with a mixture
of elements of improvisation and variation.

More
insight on the individual rhapsodies can be found in the excellent
“introduction” to the complete rhapsodies recorded by Leslie Howard
for Hyperion. It is hard to characterize the level of pianistic gymnastics
required to perform these works – especially as I am not a pianist myself. If I
were to provide a synopsis of any one of these, I’d say something like “a mix
of melancholy, glittering keyboard acrobatics and stormy, rousing dance”.

Composed
in 1790, the string quartets of Opus 64 constitute a second set of six quartets
for violinist Johann Tost (the first set of six are the opp. 54 and 55), who
had led the second violins of Haydn's orchestra at Esterháza from 1783 until
his departure for Paris in 1788. In Paris Tost sold some of Haydn’s
compositions, and Haydn actually dedicated the Op. 64 set to Tost in gratitude
for his efforts.

Later in
life, Tost became a cloth-merchant and dabbled in music promotion -Mozartalso apparently provided Tost with chamber music, namely his
last two string quintets.

The best
known quartet from this set is the fifth, known asThe
Larkfrom the initial entry of the first violin in the eighth bar
in the high register used from time to time in these quartets.

Heard in
our two posts andYouTubeselections, theAeolian Quartet was a highly reputed string quartet
based in London (UK), with a long international touring history and presence,
an important recording and broadcasting profile. It was the successor of the
pre-War Stratton Quartet, adopting its new name in the late 1940s and
disbanding in 1981.

The
Quartet made many recordings, but is especially noted for this complete Haydn
cycle, which included the dubious op 3 series, and an account of theSeven
Last Words From The Cross with poetic readings by Peter Pears. (http://www.deccaclassics.com/en/cat/4781267)

Of
course, the times have changed since these were captured on vinyl (mid-1970’s),
and there are excellent versions of these quartets available with both modern
and period ensembles. However, the enduring quality of these performances is
undeniable: everything seems perfect and royally balanced, ahead of the
approach embraced by period groups. This is distinguished classicism,
uncompromising but still colorful, cheerful and often, when necessary,
infinitely deep.

For the next couple of weeks, I wanted to spend some time
considering a set of works that – for the most part – are both well-known and
fun to listen to.

The Hungarian Rhapsodies constitute a set of 19 piano pieces
based on Hungarian folk themes, composed by Franz Liszt during 1846–1853, and
later in 1882 and 1885. Liszt also arranged versions for orchestra, piano duet
and piano trio.

Some are better known than others, with Hungarian Rhapsody
No. 2 being particularly famous.

Liszt incorporated many themes he had heard in his native
western Hungary and which he believed to be folk music, though many were in
fact contemporary tunes written by members of the Hungarian upper middle class,
or by composers of the time, and performed publically by Roma (Gypsy) bands.

The large scale structure of each was influenced by the verbunkos,
a Hungarian dance in several parts, each with a different tempo. Within this
structure, Liszt preserved the two main structural elements of typical Gypsy improvisation—the
lassan ("slow") and the friska ("fast"). At
the same time, Liszt incorporated a number of effects unique to the sound of
Gypsy bands, especially the pianistic equivalent of the cimbalom.

In their original piano form, the Hungarian Rhapsodies are
noted for their difficulty. As is the norm for much of Liszt’s piano solo
output, the thinking has to have been to use these works to showcase and
display his legendary technique at the keyboard.

All nineteen rhapsodies will not fit our usual 75 to 90
minute podcast format, so I had to come up with a logical way of splitting them
up over two podcasts… To do so, I chose to consider first the orchestral
versions of the rhapsodies.

Indeed, Rhapsodies no. 2, 5, 6, 9, 12, and 14 were arranged
for orchestra by Franz Doppler, with revisions by Liszt himself. These
orchestrations appear as S.359 in the Searle catalogue; however, the numbers
given to these versions were different from their original numbers. The
orchestral rhapsodies numbered 1-6 correspond to the piano solo versions
numbered 14, 2, 6, 12, 5 and 9 respectively.

In my record collection, I have two sets of these orchestral
rhapsodies – one by Kurt Mazur and the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra (from the
mid-80’s) and a second as part of a two-disc set of Liszt orchestral music
performed by the orchestra of the Wiener Staatsoper (the Vienna Philharmonic
under an assumed name, from the late 1950’s) under the legendary Herrmann
Scherchen, whose rough-and-ready style is suits the mood of these pieces so
well. Our montage features the latter, in a digitally restored version.

Monday, December 1, 2014

The year 2014 comes to an end (already!) and our line-up for December offers what I hope is a “lighter” load for the holidays. Our main feature this month is a “complete” set of Liszt’s 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies, both for the orchestra and the piano. I think – if we combine our Once Upon the Internet post, we will cover all but a couple of the rhapsodies in their piano version.

December
2 – Pierre’s
Podcast Vault Selection of the Month: As an early Christmas present, some
music about kids, and for kids including Babar the Little Elephant and The
Toy Box. This montage will be featured on our Pod-O-Matic channel until 31
December 2014. http://www.talkclassical.com/blogs/itywltmt/1751-childs-play.html

December
23 – 2014 Gumdrops:
Our traditional special Chronique du Disque, usually devoted to
acquisitions and other musical finds that did not make it on posts this year.
Among my gumdrops look for three large CD collections by Herbert von Karajan
and the Berlin Philharmonic, as we mark the 25th anniversary of his
passing. http://www.talkclassical.com/blogs/itywltmt/1757-gumdrops-2014-a.html

All of our Tuesday, Friday and ad-hoc posts, as well as OTF and YouTube Channel updates get regularly mentioned (with links) on our Fan Page. If you are a user of Facebook, simply subscribe to get notified so you never miss anything we do!

To conclude our November
series of tribute-montages, we now turn to Claudio Abbado. In a way, this is
our second tribute to the Italian maestro, if you count our earlier post on Verdi's Requiem Mass.

Claudio Abbado is born in
Milan (1933) into a family of musicians: his father was a violinist, his
mother is a pianist and his brother Marcello will later lead the same Milan Conservatory
where his father taught and where Claudio studied piano, composition and conducting
after WWII and until 1955.

After Milan, Claudio leaves
for Vienna to further study piano (with Friedrich Gulda) and conducting (with Hans
Swarowsky). During these studies, he will befriend fellow students Martha
Argerich and Zubin Mehta. He will even sing in the Viennese Singverein where he will have a great
vantage point to study the conducting of the likes of Hermann Scherchen, Josef
Krips, Bruno Walter and Herbert von Karajan.

In 1958, Abbado enters the
Koussevitzky competition at Tanglewood and will win First Prize (over his
friend Mehta). He returns to Italy briefly and, in order to kick start a
career, chooses to enter a second American conducting competition, the
Mitropoulos in New-York, where he will not only win in 1963, but get the
opportunity to apprentice under Leonard Bernstein at the New-York Philharmonic.
He and Seiji Ozawa will have the opportunity to be featured in Bernstein’s Young Artists concerts, getting instant
attention.

Abbado cements his
reputation and wins appointments in Europe - La Scala, London Symphony
Orchestra, Wiener Staatsoper and in 1988, he is named Karajan’s successor at
the Berlin Philharmonic, embarking in a major overhaul of the orchestra’s
membership and programming. His fresh, laid-back approach wins him favour with
many around the orchestra, and after 15 years as its Music Director, he announces
his plans to step down. At that time, however, Abbado is struck with stomach
cancer 0 which he will battle until his death this year. Although he returns
frequently to conduct in Berlin, he devotes his energies to the Lucerne
Festival and founds the Mozart Orchestra in Bologna.

Abbado’s repertoire – and discography
– is quite impressive and diverse. He is at ease in classical and modern music,
in concert pieces and operas. Our modest sampling today shows him conducting Tchaikovsky early (with the New
Philharmonia) and late (with the Chicago Symphony) in his career. Also from his
early days, we feature his stellar collaboration with Martha Argerich in their “reference”
performance of Prokofiev’s third piano concerto.

The Friday Blog and Podcast returns for two more tribute-montages by artists we have lost earlier this year. In this case, our two montages (today and next Friday) look at two conductors.In past posts, I have often discussed the generaton of conductirs born around 1915, names like Bernstein, Karajan, Giulini ans so many nore. These me, directly or indirectly, helped mould the generation of conductors born between 1930 and1940, such as Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa and Daniel Barenboim. We should add to that list two recently decease conductors: Claudio Abbado and Lorin Maazel.

Without wanting to necessarily compare these two men, there are some interesting points to consider. Both have a Berlin connecton (Maazel led the Radio Symphony made famous by Ferenc Fricsay, Abbado succeedsà Karajan at the helm of the Philharmoniker) and both left us substantial dicsographies.

However, these are two very different men, who approached their crafts in very different ways. Maazel was the autocratic, exacting task master, and Abbado is more of a "regular guy", easy going and latin in his fervor for the music. In a sense, Abbado is Stokowski, Maazel is Toscanini.

Maazel was born to AMerican parents living abroad (Paris, actually), and starts off as a winderkind: violin lessons at fivem conducting lessosn (no less!) at seven, and as a pint-sized conductor, he's invited to lead the NBC Symphony (at Toscanini's invitation) at twelve.

But the life of a child musician isn't what Maazel has in mind - playing outdoors and doing what other kids his age do is more his speed, and so he "retires" at 15. A bookworm, Maazel chooses to read literature at the University of Pittsburgh and - to make some pocket money - he enlists in the string section of the Pittsburgh Symphony.One has to think that this second kick at msic, and encounters with some of the great consuctors and artists making t through STeeltown, give Maazel the bug, and he chooses to study early music (as a Fulbright scholar) in Italy. He moves to Europe, and from there re-launches a career as conductor.After moving around, guesting on some of Europe's great podiums, he will finally take on his own orchestras there and later in America. Of note, stints as director of the Berlin RSO (1964–1975), l’Orchestre National de France (1977-1990), Cleveland (1977-1990) and New-York (2002-2009).A conductor renowned for his great ear, he was a respected and sought conductor of the Romantic repertoire - Mahler,Sibelius,Puccini orRichard Strauss, usually conducting without a score. The Vinna Phulharonic, which doesn't have a director per se, invited Maazel regularly, and he had the honour of conducting their New Year concerts 11 times between 1980 and 2005 (nine times with a violin in hand). However, Maazel does have his critics - his exacting styule often criticized as favouring form over expression, and his autocratic ways alienating players (according to Dohnanyi who succeeded hin in Cleveland, musicians pointed out that Maazel often simply kept the beat rather than elicit phrasing).

The Maazel legacy is still quite impressive - Beethioven and Rachmaninov cycles (Cleveland and Berlin, respecrtively), the first complete recording of Porgy and Bess, and so many performances with so many orchestras, captured for us to enjoy.

Today, I chose Richard Strauss and George Gershwin (with the Cleveland Orchestra), the Dvořák, Eighth (with the Vienna Philharmonic) and Maazel accompanying Gidon Kremer on the violinist's debut recording for DGG.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Today’s Once Upon the Internet unearths some tracks recorded by the Swiss-Ukrainian cellist, author and musicologist Dimitry Markevitch. If the name sounds familiar, it may be because he’s the younger brother of the renowned conductor, Igor Markevitch.

Born in Switzerland of Ukrainian parents, Dimirty Markevitch (1923–2002) started cello at age six. He studied with Maurice Eisenberg at the École Normale in Paris and then at Tanglewood with Gregor Piatigorsky, who had first befriended and taught Markevitch at age seven.

After playing in the New York Philharmonic for five years, Markevitch returned to Paris, teaching at the École Normale, directing the Conservatoire Rachmaninoff, and even managing a sewing-machine plant.

Markevitch rediscovered several important manuscripts, including Westphal and Kellner transcriptions of several Bach Suites, and published his own edition of the Suites, playing all six in recital at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1964.

He also unearthed two previously unknown pieces by Ludwig van Beethoven: the Sonata for Violoncello and Piano, Opus 64 (based on his string trio, op. 3), and the Kreutzer Sonata, transcribed for cello by Czerny.

He contributed to editions of pieces by Mussorgsky, De Falla, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich and wrote Cello Story, a book on the history and repertoire of the cello.

He was one of the first people to champion "authentic" instrumental techniques and played a baroque cello for pieces composed before the 19th century. He specialized in works for the solo cello and his book The Solo Cello is a comprehensive guide to the subject.

Among the works I retained you will find two of the Bach solo cello suites, and two Beethoven sonatas for cello and piano – he op. 64 he’s credited with rediscovering and the op. 17 (originally set for horn, but also adapted by Ludwig for the cello.)

Happy Listening!

All works performed by DImitry Markevitch, cello with Daniel Spiegelberg, piano (Beethoven sonatas)

Earlier
this week, we paused to remember the many soldiers who lost their lives in
armed conflict. As I tried to explain in my
Tuesday post, we should not confuse “war” and “warfighters”. Yes,
warfighters are in the business of war, but whether they are full-time members
of the Armed Forces or part-time Reservists, these people are also pursuing a
career, an honourable one at that, where their skills are not only used in
armed conflict, but also in humanitarian pursuits. It is a selfless – and sometimes
under-appreciated – job, where people are asked to put their lives on the line
for others, and this is something that deserves our support and admiration.

As part of
my everyday business, I have dealt with members of Armed Forces from all over
the Western world, and I’m yet to meet a professional soldier (or aviator, or
sailor) who “likes” war. War, if and when it happens, is their job, nothing
more, nothing less.

The reason why
I take time here to bring this up is, simply, because I don’t think that
anybody – in or out of Uniform – is indifferent to the horrors of war. It is in
that context that I present today’s work, and its “anti war” message. I am
anti-war, but not anti-warfighter.

On the
night of 14 November 1940, the city of Coventry was devastated by bombs dropped
by the Luftwaffe. The Cathedral burned with the city, having been hit by
several incendiary devices.The decision to rebuild the cathedral was taken
the morning after its destruction; rebuilding would not be an act of defiance, but rather a sign of faith,
trust and hope for the future of the world.

Her Majesty
the Queen laid the foundation stone on 23 March 1956 and the new cathedral,
designed by Basil Spence and built along side the ruins of the original
millenium-old structure, was consecrated on 25 May 1962, in her presence. The
reconsecration was an occasion for an arts festival, for which Michael Tippett wrote
his opera King Priam and for which Benjamin Britten was commissioned to write a
piece.

The
Festival gave Britten a free hand in his choice of the genre of work, and he
took the opportunity to fulfil a long-term general scheme to write a major
choral work that had been at the back of his mind since the late 1940s. Of
greater personal significance for Britten, however, was the platform the Coventry
commission gave him to make a public statement about his strongly held pacifist
beliefs. In War Requiem, Britten could speak out in opposition to war, violence
and inhumanity. The resulting
work was not meant to be a pro-British piece or a glorification of
British soldiers, but a public statement of Britten's anti-war convictions. It
was a denunciation of the wickedness of war, not of other men. The piece was also meant to be a warning to future generations of the senselessness of taking up arms against fellow men.

The fact that
Britten wrote the piece for three specific soloists -- a German baritone
(Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau), a Russian soprano (Galina Vishnevskaya), and a
British tenor (Peter Pears) -- demonstrated that he had more than the losses of
his own country in mind, and symbolized the importance of reconciliation.
(Unfortunately Vishnevskaya was not available for the first performance, and
had to be replaced by Heather Harper).

Britten
dedicated the work to Roger Burney (Sub-Lieutenant, Royal Naval Volunteer
Reserve), Piers Dunkerley (Captain, Royal Marines), David Gill (Ordinary
Seaman, Royal Navy), and Michael Halliday (Lieutenant, Royal New Zealand
Volunteer Reserve). Burney and Halliday, who died in the war, were friends of
Peter Pears and Britten, respectively. Dunkerley, "one of Britten's
closest friends, took part in the 1944 Normandy landings. Unlike the other
dedicatees, he survived the war but committed suicide in June 1959, two months
before his wedding.

For the
text of the War Requiem, Britten interspersed the Latin Mass for the Dead with
nine poems written by Wilfred Owen, a World War I footsoldier who was killed a
week before the Armistice. Owen wrote of his poetry: "I am not concerned
with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense conciliatory. They may be
to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must
be truthful."

Much of the impact of the anti-war message of War Requiem lay in Britten’s strategic placing of his Owen settings in relation to the Latin Mass, where the horrors of the poet’s experience in the trenches are used to undermine the ritual mourning of church and state.

The musical
forces are divided into three groups that alternate and interact with each
other throughout the piece, finally fully combining at the end of the last
movement. The soprano soloist and choir are accompanied by the full orchestra,
the baritone and tenor soloists are accompanied by the chamber orchestra, and
the boys' choir is accompanied by a small positive organ (this last group
ideally being situated at some distance from the full orchestra). This group
produces a very strange, distant sound. The soprano and choir and the boys'
choir sing the traditional Latin Requiem text, while the tenor and baritone
sing poems by Wilfred Owen, interspersed throughout.

Against the
background of contemporary anxieties about the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile
crisis, the expansion of hostilities in the Vietnam War, and the fiftieth
anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War in 1964, Britten’s lament
for the dead of two world wars and the consequences of war could not have been
more timely, and the socio-political climate of the early 1960s undoubtedly
made its own contribution to War Requiem’s international success.

With the exception of next week’s podcast of Brittten’s War
Requiem, all of our montages this month pay tribute to artists we have lost
over the last calendar year. To begin, we take a few moments to remember the
great Italian operatic tenor Carlo Bergonzi who died on 25
July 2014, aged 90. The below highlights are stolen from his obituary.

There was no finer interpreter of Donizetti's, Verdi's and
Puccini's tenor roles throughout his
long career than Carlo Bergonzi. His singing of all three composers' music
evinced an innate sense of how to mould an immaculate line projected on a long
breath, an exemplary clarity of diction, and an authoritative use of the
particular style called for in interpreting a role. Over and over again, you
could hear, and can still hear on his many recordings, how to shape a phrase
and to do so with a voice of intrinsic beauty, flawlessly produced, so no
effort seemed involved. Far from being a macho
tenor, he was the aristocrat of the breed and as such universally admired, even
if he did not evoke the visceral excitement of his near-contemporaries, Franco
Corelli and Luciano Pavarotti.

He was born in Vidalenzo, northern Italy, and looked likely
to become a cheesemaker like his father until his voice was discovered. After
service in the Italian army during WWII, and a period as a prisoner of Germany,
he trained as a baritone and began
his professional life in that mode, making his debut as Rossini's Figaro in 1948. By 1950 he concluded that he might really be a tenor and retrained, making
his first appearance in his new range in Giordano's
Andrea Chénier in 1951, the year he
was also engaged to sing a tenor part in I
Due Foscari for Italian radio celebrations of the 50th anniversary of
Verdi's death. The voice still sounds there a shade tentative, but by 1953,
when Bergonzi made his debut at La Scala and appeared, as Don Alvaro, in La Forza del Destino at the old Stoll
theatre, London, the transformation was complete. He was acclaimed as a new
tenor of real worth.

In 1956 he made his debut, as Radames in Aida, at the Metropolitan Opera in New
York, and continued to sing there for more than 30 years, evidence of the
security of his technique and the fact that he was careful not to force his
voice out of its natural range and strength. One of his last roles, in 1988,
was Rodolfo in Luisa Miller, suitably
enough as his account of the famous tenor aria in that opera was always a model
of Verdian style.

Bergonzi was just as affecting in a lighter vein. His
Nemorino (L'Elisir d'Amore), caught
late in his career, at the Royal Opera House, in 1981, was endearing. His
performances, in recital, of Italian song were enchanting in their intimacy and
delicacy of manner. Pieces such as Mascagni's
Serenata or Tosti's L'Alba Separa Dalle
Luce L'Ombra were the pure essence of Bergonzi, and he delighted in
conveying his joy in singing them to his audiences.

Bergonzi recorded extensively. His lasting memorial will
surely be his performance for Philips of all the tenor arias in Verdi's operas.
His sovereign Alvaro is preserved on an EMI set of La Forza del Destino, his Radames on Herbert von Karajan's Decca
set of Aida, his classic Rodolfo on a
Decca Bohème, and his Cavaradossi on
Callas's second set of Tosca, for
EMI. These, plus a legendary recital dating from 1958 for Decca, provide the
essence of his great art.

Today’s montage really has three distinct parts. The first
few selections are of Neapolitan songs, a fine display indeed of Bergonzi’s
ability to project and use his voice to convey the bittersweet feelings often
carried by those ballads. Listen closely to how the voice trembles at the
climax of Cardillo’s ode to the
ungrateful heart. What a voice!

An extended portion of the montage is dedicated to an entire
recital of Bergonzi singing music from the Italian baroque, and baroquie opera.
Again, these are conveyed with such conviction, elevating these songs to the
level of the late romantic composers that will follow them.

Of course, a tribute to Bergonzi would be incomplete without
sampling him in Verdi arias. Nobody – I mean nobody – sings Verdi with such
verve and passion, none before, and none since.

Saturday, November 1, 2014

This month, per our yearly tradition on ITYWLTMT, we pause to pay tribute to those we have lost. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War, the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War and – especially following the recent tragic events in Ottawa – we have some planned posts around Remembrance.

All of our Tuesday, Friday and ad-hoc posts, as well as OTF and YouTube Channel updates get regularly mentioned (with links) on our Fan Page. If you are a user of Facebook, simply subscribe to get notified so you never miss anything we do!

Earlier in
this month’s series of podcasts, I spent some time looking at operetta as the
light-hearted cousin of what we have come to call “Grand Opera”. At that time,
I had hinted to a relationship between operetta and the Musical Comedy, a genre
that has taken root on American stages and on the Silver Screen.

The Musical
has its fair share of – shall I say – bold and ambitious works, in a scale not
unlike operetta or opera. The works that come to mind are Show Boat
(Hammerstein and Kern) and West Side Story (Sondheim, Laurents and Bernstein).
We could add – for not too dissimilar reasons – Hair (Rado, Ragni and MacDermott),
Jesus Christ, Superstar (Rice and Lloyd-Webber) or even Rent
(Larson) or Tommy (The Who) all credited as “Rock Operas.

Many of the
stated works are indeed ambitious, but they were all designed (at least,
originally) as “musicals” and not as operas, though some of these works have
been staged by opera companies.

However,
there are few stages in New York City available to mount operas. There’s the
Met, the New-York City Opera, or even some of the music schools which offer
opera training programs. As a result, it should not be surprising that there
have been operas staged on theatres that line the Great White Way. Gershwin’s
Porgy and Bess had its original 1035 New-York run on Broadway (Alvin
Theatre), for example. According to an article, written in 1946, Kurt Weill,
expressed rthis opinion:

When I
first came to the United States eleven years ago, I became rapidly convinced
that the Broadway legitimate stage is to the American public what the opera and
concert halls are to the European. With that thought in mind, I have repeatedly
aimed my music at the Broadway stage, and today I am convinced that the
American public is ready to accept its own form of grand opera on the
legitimate stage. […] In Europe, opera houses and legitimate theatres are
subsidized by the state. I was able to compose for them and be assured of a
hearing for my works. By the time I was twenty-six I had operas in virtually
every major companyís repertoire in Germany. But I was playing to a limited
public. My adaptation of the Three Penny Opera (on The Beggar's Opera theme)
and its world success opened my eyes to the vast possibilities in an audience
which did not seek opera as its daily fare.

Another
composer who understood this equation was the Italian-American Gian-Carlo
Menotti. According to NPR music commentator Miles Hoffman,
"Menotti thought it was crucial to bring opera to a large popular
audience. He once wrote, 'If I insist on bringing my operas to Broadway, it is
simply because of the letters I receive which begin, "Dear Mr. Menotti, I
have never seen an opera until tonight." ' "

Menotti’s The
Consul opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway in 1949, earning
him not only a Broadway hit but also a Pulitzer Prize.

A couple of
years earlier, between May and November 1947, the Ethel Barrymore Theatre
presented 212 performances of an operatic double-feature of The Medium and The
Telephone, both short oiperas by Menotti (Internet Broadway Database reference here). Before that, the pair was staged at the Heckscher Theatre by The Ballet Society
in February of that year.

Today’s
podcast presents this double-bill, featuring the 1947 Broadway cast in a studio
recording supervised by Menotti and conducted by Emanuel Balaban. The two works
could not be more different in terms of atmosphere. Aptly programmed for our
Hallowe’en podcast, The Medium, introduces us to a woman who has posed
as a person who can contacts spirits (but is shown to use trickery) starting to
hear voices and feel phantom presences she cannot explain. The Telephone
is a light-hearted piece where a man comes to his girlfriend's apartment to
propose, only to find her preoccupied with talking on the telephone.

Both works
have their twist endings – albeit the a propos ending in the tragic
Medium is predictable. The works are sung in English, so I can dispense with a
detailed synopsis. Here are some links to synopses and libretti for these operas: